After dominating his home state weekend at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, Aaron Telitz ended another day “up north” on top of the time-sheet. The 24 year-old ended the day one-tenth of a second ahead of his championship leading Team Pelfrey teammate Pato O’Ward.
Aaron Telitz leads Pato O’Ward in Toronto (Photo courtesy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, LLC Photography)
Nico Jamin (Cape Motorsports with /WTR), TJ Fischer (Team Pelfrey) and Will Owen (Juncos Racing) were the remainder of the top five.
First session:
Despite the extended USF2000 session before them, the nine Pro Mazda presented by Cooper Tire entries were able to begin under sunny skies, with low 70F temperatures, and on time at 8:40am.
In an almost exact copy of the Cooper Tires USF2000 Powered by Mazda session before them, the Pro Mazda session came to a halt when the red flag flew for contact in Turn 11. Nicolas Dapero and his No. 31 Juncos Racing machine made contact with the nose of his car suffering moderate damage. The 17 year-old Argentinian was able to get out of the car under his own power.
The track went green after a short clean-up and the drivers were able to get between eight and nine hot laps completed before Dapero’s Juncos Racing teammate Jake Parsons made hard contact with the wall at the exit of Turn 11. The rear end of Melbourne, Australia natives No. 00 got loose and tagged the outside wall with his right rear tire, turning his car into the wall nose first, suffering significant damage to the nose of the car.
Championship leader and previous Toronto podium finisher Pato O’Ward was the quickest driver in the session. Parsons, Aaron Telitz (Team Pelfrey), Will Owen (Juncos Racing) and Nico Jamin (Cape Motorsports with /WTR) made up the remainder of the top five.
Second session:
The final Mazda Road To Indy session of “Free Friday”, the second Pro Mazda presented by Cooper Tire session of the day, was the only one of the six Mazda Road To Indy sessions to run clean and green.
After hard contact in Turn 11 during the morning session, the Smart Mind Institute sponsored No. 00 of Jake Parsons sustained too much damage to be repaired. The Juncos Racing crew immediately got to work preparing the back-up car and were able to get Parsons fitted and the Australian was able to get out on track for 21 laps.
The busy Juncos Racing crew was also able to get the No. 31 of Nicolas Dapero repaired and the rookie driver was able to turn 21 laps.
Cooper Tires Pro Mazda Grand Prix of Toronto combined time-sheet
| RANK | NAME | QUICK LAP TIME | TOTAL LAPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aaron Telitz | 1:11.598 | 24 |
| 2 | Pato O’Ward | 1:11.701 | 26 |
| 3 | Nico Jamin | 1:12.042 | 29 |
| 4 | TJ Fischer | 1:12.686 | 30 |
| 5 | Will Owen | 1:12.937 | 28 |
| 6 | Jorge Cevallos | 1:13.008 | 32 |
| 7 | Jake Parsons | 1:13.235 | 29 |
| 8 | Nicolas Dapero | 1:14.160 | 21 |
| 9 | Bobby Eberle | 1:15.136 | 31 |
Qualifying for Pro Mazda begins at 9:10am on Saturday morning and the first race is at 5:20pm.